


Phantasmagoria

by illa_dixit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illa_dixit/pseuds/illa_dixit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A bizarre or fantastic assemblage"</p><p>(In which the author plays merry hell with both canons and calls it a success.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this piece of art, except that I changed a whole slew of things. http://kate-kyrillion.deviantart.com/art/Tortallans-Assemble-305603092

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numair is a ditzy scientist and Daine loses her temper

**1.**

_The thing was_ , Arram considered as he paced around the lab, _Daine was actually a good lab assistant, when everything was said and done._

She was curious, unafraid to ask questions and attentive to the answers. She took excellent care of the lab mice (and the researchers, when they forgot to eat). Plus, she was full of common sense, willing to shoo both him and Kaddar off to bed when they went too long without sleep, and just plain _sweet._

So it was really too bad that he was probably going to have to fire her.

There was a knock on the door, and Daine entered (which he was expecting), followed by Kaddar (which he was not expecting, but could probably work with). Wordlessly, Arram dropped a sealed envelope on a lab table and watched carefully for any reactions as both Daine and Kaddar craned their heads to see better.

Kaddar only looked confused, but Daine’s face was an intriguing mask of carefully blank that he had never seen on her before. Red flag number one.

The envelope itself was entirely unremarkable except for the seal. It was a simple blue circle, featuring a silver design of a sword thrust down through a simple crown. The letters TORTALL were printed neatly below the circle.

Arram knew exactly what that stood for, and he wasn’t quite willing to pack up his research and run away to join them, thanks very much, just like he said the last time. But the envelope hadn’t been on his desk, like he would have expected. It was on Kaddar’s.

Picking up the envelope and offering it to his student, Arram spoke quietly. “No one but we three has been in here, or should know this exists. Kaddar, these people are deadly serious in everything they do. Please keep that in mind. Daine, you and I may be having words soon, depending on the contents of that envelope.”

Kaddar obediently opened the envelope and began to read, his face growing paler as he reached the end. He looked helplessly up at Arram and Daine. “It’s my uncle… I knew – I had some idea – of what he’s been doing, but not this much, and if he knows that I know-“

“That’s what the letter’s for.” Daine said quietly, a faint accent that didn’t usually color her voice creeping in but, strangely, sounding natural. “You have a choice to make,” she shot a dark look at Arram, the significance of which was not lost on him, “but best make it fast.”

\- - -

_“Who are you?” he asked her that night, after Kaddar had left, as she finished straightening files that probably needed no straightening._

_She shrugged, eyes carefully on the papers and off of his face. “Daine’s really my name. Well, Veralidaine, but that’s a fair mouthful. Some circles, I’m Wolfspeaker, Eagle-Eyes. . . don’t see how it matters much, long as I can protect you.”_

_He stared for a moment, before asking incredulously, “You kept a name like ‘Veralidaine’ when you decided to become a secret agent?”_

_She looked up at that, caught his expression, and smiled gently at him. “S’all I got left of my Ma. What, you’d change yours?”_

_“Oh, yes.” He said with feeling. “I actually considered using a pen name throughout grad school, but never got up the nerve to do it. ‘Arram Draper’ just isn’t a name that inspires confidence.”_

_She giggled, at that, and the normal order of the world seemed to be restored._

\- - -

The next day was testing day, which meant calibration of all of the equipment and (briefly) spoiling of all the mice before they went through the treatment. With any luck, it would provide increased healing, but that would take a lot of luck. No one really expected it to work, which was why a horticulture student (Kaddar) and theoretical physicist (Arram) were the ones assigned to the research.

In the meantime, Kaddar and Daine were in the radiation room, Kaddar messing with dials until everything was perfect while Daine handed him tools. Arram was glancing through the code, making sure that everything was going to go as planned.

And indeed, everything was going to go as planned until Kaddar’s uncle, General Ozorne, stepped through the door to their lab.

 - - -

Arram couldn’t actually remember much after that, excepting a few flashes. Daine shoving Kaddar out of the radiation room moments before everything clicked on without any of the safety measures in place, shouting at them both to run; his vision going fuzzy around the edges and a sharp pain to the back of his head; Kaddar lighting the envelope on fire as Ozorne snarled at him; a whirlwind of debris, the collapse of the building, the sky moving by at a rate that really shouldn’t have been possible.

When he woke up, it was on the floor of a jungle. Daine was wrapped in his lab coat (and it looked like perhaps nothing else, but he was trying very hard not to think about that), sitting cross-legged next to him and messing with a length of wood and collection of vines and feathers.

“What happened?” he managed, after blinking a few times to be sure that he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

The answer was quiet and a little guilty, as Daine refused to meet his gaze and instead concentrated on her work.

“I lost my temper.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alanna likes exploding stuff, and Raoul is the best, okay?

**2.**

Alanna Trebond woke with a battery in her chest, a bone-deep ache though her entire body, and a sharp dagger stabbed into her very soul.

“Thom?” she called, knowing she wasn’t going to like the answer but needing to ask anyway. They were twins, brother and sister, different as night and day but always, _always_ there for each other. What would she do if he wasn’t there? What would become of everything they stood for? She had the ability to create and build and fix broken things, more than her brother had ever possessed, but he was the one with the oceans of inspiration lurking behind purple eyes. What could she construct without Thom to design it?

“I’m sorry,” a voice said softly, as gentle hands moved her searching fingers away from the electric leads that disappeared into her flesh, and her world shattered around the edges as truth sunk in.

\- - -

It was another two days before she truly awoke from her grief. The voice, as it turned out, belonged to Liam Ironarm and the battery was – according to him – Thom’s final gift to her. They’d both been so full of shrapnel after the blast that there had been no way to get all the pieces out: an electromagnet was the only option to keep the deadly shards from their hearts. Thom, having been behind Alanna when the explosion occurred, was significantly less damaged and wound up regaining conscious rapidly where Alanna had not. He’d designed something wonderful, but had built something clumsy: a piece of work so very _Thom_ that Alanna had burst into tears once again when Liam showed her the tiny sketches of what Thom had really wanted to create.

Before Alanna had woken up, the terrorists who grabbed them had demanded that Thom design them weapons. Thom had refused, and they’d killed him for it.

The next few days, Alanna cycled furiously through anger, grief, and fear (she’d nearly drowned when she was five, the pseudo-repeats of the experience where not exactly fun). It had been a week when she finally managed to surface from everything except the anger, and just let her famous temper sort through a growing, crazy plan.

She remembered something Thom had sketched one night, trying to cheer her up when they were teenagers and she’d been dumped spectacularly for the first time. The ice-cream stained piece of computer paper had been kept in her desk drawer for years, before she lost it in a move during college. But the plans… they had never really been sound, but she could probably tweak them enough for the thing to work, just for a little while.

She gave the terrorists a list, and then she and Liam got to work.

\- - -

Building the reactor Thom had envisioned, and the armor that had come to her like nothing else ever had, as if Thom was a drawing a sketch directly into her brain in glowing violet, those had been great.

But watching the cave system explode into flame had been positively _invigorating_ , marred only (but extremely thoroughly) by the horrible sense of loss that accompanied her in the desert as it truly sunk in that she was alone. Thom had been murdered, and she’d watched Liam gunned down as he bought her enough time to get everything working.

The armor hadn’t been constructed to go far, or for very long, before it wouldn’t be able to handle the power the reactor, glowing like an ember, in her chest was pumping through it. She’d have needed sturdier materials for that, but the basic design was sound. It just needed some healing and improvement, and then it would truly be something to fear.

 _Perhaps it also needed a classier paint job,_ she considered as she started off through the desert in search of civilization. _Purple and gold?_

\- - -

“Welcome home, Alanna!”

That was all she had heard for the past two weeks, after Raoul (goddess bless the man, and his cheerful abuse of military authority to acquire helicopters and come find her) had pulled her out of the desert and taken her home.

Some of it had been welcome – the relief in George’s eyes was probably something she wasn’t going to stop feeling vaguely guilty over until Haley’s comet came around again; she had half-expected Coram to actually shed tears, which was just a petrifying thought; and MYLES’s synthetic voice had been full of much more emotion than she had previously thought lines of code were capable of generating.

Roger, on the other hand? That had been an interesting can of worms.

Thom had put so much trust into his business sense (which was probably fair, the man was good at it), but Alanna had always been vaguely uncomfortable around him in a way she was completely incapable of articulating. And he definitely hadn’t been happy when she’d closed down production of weapons and gone to fume in peace in her rooms (technically they were all her rooms now, but she would always think of everything as being half Thom’s) and build increasingly destructive suits of battle armor in the workshop.

Thom’s half she left exactly as it was: all pristine lines and pads of blueprint paper and scattered mechanical pencils. But her half was quickly overtaken by discarded pieces as she improved and improved, until the icing problem had been fixed (which was nice, she hated the cold) and she felt suitably prepared for whatever might happen, up to and including freak electrical storms.

Which, as it turned out, was fortunate when everything finally went to hell.

\- - -

“Sit still, lass.” George said, wielding a foundation brush perilously close to her eye, and Alanna obeyed while trying to at least pretend she had some intention of doing whatever ridiculous thing Gary was telling her about.

Seriously, Jon wanted her not to make life difficult for his supposedly secret organization? He could at least ask her himself. And it wasn’t like MYLES hadn’t known about it for years, since she’d always kept an eye on what few friends she had managed to make, with her abrasive personality and Thom’s… Thom-ness, and the general creepy-twin thing they had always pulled off.

Now that he was gone, that was probably more important than ever.

Five minutes later, standing at a (slightly lower than standard) podium and looking out at the small ocean of reporters, Alanna decided that she didn’t actually care what the consequences were for Jon, or even herself.

“The truth is…”

She’d get him something shiny later. The truth was more important right now.

“… I am the Lioness.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was originally some stuff about Alanna stumbling across the Bloody Hawk tribe and hanging out for a while, but it really didn't fit with the rest of the narrative, so it got cut. Oh well.
> 
> Also, I actually really like Thom, but you won't know that what with how quickly I killed him off. WHOOPS.  
> (And I can't decide if George is a really efficient assistant, like Pepper, or if he's just awesome at delegating other people to do stuff and then putting all the information together to make it look like he did everything)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal squawks and Kel ignores him, even though they met like two seconds ago.

**3.**

_The science credits weren’t really worth it,_ Owen found himself thinking giddily as he frantically tried to get around the fact that he’d just run over a very tall woman wearing very imposing armor with the van. _Seriously, should have just let Neal starve himself to death accidentally. Or get scurvy or something._

Seeing as the van was stopped anyway, he took a deep breath and calmed himself down somewhat as he pulled the emergency break and looked around for the first aid kit, only to see Dr. Lindhall Reed shaking his head slightly and pointing at the open door. Neal and the kit were conspicuously absent, which was probably just as well, since Neal was the only one of them who’d have any idea how to do something more complicated than applying band aids and ice. 

Not for the first time, Owen took a brief moment to reflect on how unfair life was – to follow his dream and get his criminal justice degree he needed some science credits despite being supremely ungifted when it came to such things. And then Neal had come waltzing along and informed him that he needed an intern and was Owen interested because Neal really couldn’t think of anyone else who would put up with him and the middle of nowhere at the same time.

Owen hadn’t been able to think of anyone, either, and so here they were. In the middle of nowhere, doing research (well, Neal and Dr. Reed were doing research), stuck with Neal all the time. It had reached the point where he actually no longer reacted to most of Neal’s rants, particularly the ones about unattainable women laughably far out of his league.

Speaking of, it had been quiet for a few minutes too long now, which meant that something was probably up. Neal was never quiet that long, not if he could be making sarcastic comments or adding unnecessary drama. Owen went to investigate.

The tall lady with the armor was standing and walking (well, staggering) around, while Neal stalked after her yelling about possible concussions and dislocated shoulders (which, now that Owen looked, _ew_ arms were so not supposed to go that way). It would have been funny if it were happening to someone else, but as it was, it was just some combination of sad and slightly terrifying.

He must have made some sort of noise, because suddenly she was looming over him, curiously blank-faced. Neal, clearly not paying any attention, walked straight into her back and let forth a stream of curses after bouncing right off of the armor, clutching at his nose.

“You,” she said after a few considering moments where Owen managed to get Neal sitting down with some tissues stuffed up his nose and mostly not embarrass himself in front of the intimidating lady. “are his squire?”

“I, no- what?” Owen managed after completely failing to take a moment to process what she had said. “If you mean like an assistant, then yeah sure?”

“And he is a-“ here, she examined the contents of the now-open first aid kit as Neal glared at her and muttered muffled complaints about internal bleeding and people who just didn’t listen. “a healer?”

“I,” said Neal frostily, “am capable of speaking for myself, thank you. And no, I’m a med-school dropout who switched tracks to astrophysics. But you know what, you just fell from the sky, which is impossible, so sure. We’ll go with healer.”

Her expression did not change, but her eyes cleared a little. “I see. In that case, I would be most honored if you would assist me, that I might return to my station immediately.”

Neal glared. “Oh, so _now_ you want me to help? I don’t even know your name, and I’m sorry Jesslaw ran you over-“ (“Hey!” Owen objected mildly, since it was definitely not his idea to be out driving in the middle of the desert in the first place) “-but you are very odd and starting to make me nervous.”

She blushed, in the first display of emotion Owen had seen, and bowed immediately, apparently not noticing the pain that the motion _had_ to be giving her shoulder. “I apologize, I did not realize I had not introduced myself. I am the Lady Knight Keladry of Mindelan, vassal to the princess Shinkokami.” She paused for a moment before apparently making a decision and continuing with just the faintest deepening of the blush, “Protector of the Small.”

“Nealan Queenscove. That’s Owen Jesslaw, and Dr. Lindhall Reed is still in the van.” Neal waved impatiently at her with the hand not holding wadded up tissue to his nose, “Now, come on, let me see that shoulder.”

\- - -

“You cannot possibly need whatever is in that perimeter badly enough that you’re willing to fight your way through that many shady government agents.”

“I think it sounds jolly.” Owen said mildly, more to stop Neal’s rant before it started than to actually provide his opinion.

“Of course you think it sounds jolly,” Neal snorted at him, waving a hand dismissively. “You’re a bloody-minded savage, always have been.”

Kel just shrugged. “I have that need, whether you believe me or not.”

They had progressed to nick-names faster than Owen would have thought possible with someone so formal, but a good half of the formality had crumpled in the face of Neal’s… Neal-ness, and the other half fell away once the creepy government agents in the dark (and almost uniformly terrible) suits had showed up at the lab to “acquire” all of Neal and Dr. Reed’s work.

That had not gone over well, but speaking of…

“Hey, Neal, these are the same guys that took all your work. All of it. Every single napkin with an equation scribbled on it. They even took my ipod, and there’s nothing even close to science-related on _that.”_

Neal glared, switching his gaze between both of them, before muttering ‘savages’ again under his breath and waving his permission for them to proceed with storming the castle.

\- - -

As it turned out, “storming the castle” mostly involved Neal and Owen watching Kel systematically take down every single guard they encountered, including the ones who ran out in an organized squad when an alarm started blaring, and carefully picking their way through the fallen while trying not to look too much like targets.

They reached the center of the enclosure, which turned out to be a makeshift fence around a horse that could really only be described with words like “huge” and “angry” until Kel stepped out into the open and whistled sharply. After that, Owen would definitely still go with “huge” but might be willing to tone it down to “irritated and hates everything, but not actively trying to trample you.”

A man stepped into the area with them, and (mostly from the nice suit) Owen recognized Gary Naxen, the agent who had informed them that none of their data was theirs (or publishable) any longer. He wore the run-down look of a man with too little sleep and not nearly enough caffine to deal with this, but seemed determined as he demanded to know what they were after.

Of course, _that_ was when it all went to hell, because nothing beat dealing with potentially world-ending conditions when it was two in the morning and no one had slept yet.

\- - -

The Lady Knight was something to behold, alright. Owen wasn’t sure what exactly about her inspired so many complete strangers to obey when she snapped at them to do things, but he was certainly grateful for it because it meant that they weren’t, you know, dead. All in all, he didn’t actually remember most of the night – only flashes of scenes and some shouted dialogue.

Kel introducing the monster horse as Peachblossom, a name whose complete absurdity when compared to the horse’s personality was proven when, after Neal snickered at the news, he bit the scientist’s arm.

A blank, stone face with shining yellow eyes forming out of ordinary desert rock, Kel kneeling in front of it and suddenly gripping a length of wood with a foot and a half of the most deadly-looking steel Owen had ever seen topping it.

The killing devices appearing on the horizon and stalking closer towards the town, Kel shouting at them to evacuate everyone while swinging up onto Peachblossom’s saddle, Neal’s ashen expression as they hurried frightened patrons out of the diner.

One of the agents (Wolset? Was that his name? Owen can’t remember) shooting one of the devices in the eye, the iron-coated bones collapsing onto the street as a fine white mist drifted out of the hole, a quiet “Mama?” heard before it drifted apart in the wind.

Neal diving for cover, and coming up looking grim and determined with what looked like a homemade explosive (Owen was never, ever going to underestimate physicists ever again, he swore) and chucking it with surprisingly decent aim at the blonde giant with the axe who looked like he was about to take Kel’s head off for real, that time.

Kel managing to take the head off of the blonde giant, instead, and her carefully-blank face as she leaned heavily on her weapon, trusting them to take care of the devices and the civilians as she hobbled  towards a short man with dull brown hair and frankly disgusting robes.

Himself running full-tilt at a killing device, screaming as he went, to distract it enough for someone else (he was never sure who) to get a clear shot and kill it.

The remaining three devices collapsing as Kel killed the Nothing Man with little fuss and significantly less ceremony.

And after that, it was all a fuzzy mess of getting poked at by (TORTALL issued and approved) first responders and trying not to fall asleep until he had convinced someone to take a picture of Neal quietly yelling at Kel about armor being there to keep you from getting sliced to bits by axe-wielding giants and Kel quietly smiling at him while he ranted. Mostly, Owen just wanted the picture of when Neal gave up in the face of Kel’s unchanging expression and slumped down beside her before promptly falling asleep practically in her lap, head pillowed on one armored shoulder.

\- - -

Of course, as it turned out, that was not at all how this was supposed to have gone down.

Apparently, Kel had been sent as a diplomatic envoy to forge an alliance between Earth and her world, which she referred to as Yaman. Apparently, she was chosen because the house of Mindelan had a long-standing tradition of being envoys to Earth and obtaining peace treaties, and she had been here when it was her parent’s turn (this turned out to have been something like the fifteenth century or so, which sent Neal into a quiet freakout over relative time or something, Owen didn’t really get it) so she knew more about society than just about everyone else in Yaman, which seemed to have some isolationist tendencies that it tried to break out or reinforced every couple of centuries with Earth-Yaman peace treaties. Owen wasn’t sure he got that, either, but it sounded fairly important.

What was supposed to have happened was Kel would have found TORTALL, instead of them finding her, because they were apparently the closest thing to an organization that could speak, on behalf of all of Earth, to extraterrestrials or people from another dimension or whatever Kel was (another thing on the list of things that Owen didn’t get, and a really good example of exactly how much the science credits just _weren’t worth it)._

So most of a treaty got hammered out and the Director’s son showed up and something really weird happened to the sky that sent Neal and Dr. Reed into a flurry of half-finished sentences and dramatic arm movements over the _science_ before everything calmed down enough for Kel to formally introduce Shinkokami, Yamani imperial princess of the second rank, and Roald Conté, apparently the closest they had to a prince of Earth.

Owen’s life was weird.

\- - -

Despite the fact that poor Roald was pretty obviously weirded out by the whole thing, he was surprisingly willing to go along with it, and so he and Shinkokami were engaged and a lot of very nice looking parchment was signed on both sides and apparently now Yaman and Earth would protect each other from… Owen wasn’t sure he wanted to know what exactly they were protecting each other from.

In any case, Shinkokami did not go home, two attendants arrived for her, and somehow Gary Naxen managed to convince Owen to accept a job from TORTALL that, as far as Owen could tell, involved continuing to keep Neal from dying of malnutrition and also theoretically an eye on Kel or something. Owen wasn’t really planning to follow through with the second thing, because he liked and trusted Kel and, frankly, she was way too intimidating for him to actually convince her to do anything.

Whatever, that meant one more person convincing Neal to eat vegetables, so definitely a win for Owen! On the other hand, he was apparently permanently subjected to Neal’s bad poetry, now directed at Yukimi, one of Shinkokami’s attendants.

By the time there was discussion of moving everything to New York for some classified TORTALL junk (on _Alanna Trebond’s invite_ , oh gods, Neal was going to be in science heaven while simultaneously in his own personal hell), they were all getting along pretty well, which is why Owen was mostly convinced he couldn’t be surprised by anything ever again.

(Soon after that he met Margarry Cavall, was proven horrifically wrong, and, well. That’s another story.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really, really sorry if people seem out of character. (I fought a lot with this chapter, and I feel like it shows...)  
> Please try to remember that they've all grown up in very different circumstances, yeah?
> 
> Also, Neal and Kel are bros, it is my favorite thing, so of course it's here instead of the Thor-appropriate romance.


End file.
